More than two months after Arunachal Pradesh Member of Parliament Takam Sanjoy informed Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh through a letter about the omission of Arunachal Pradesh from one of nine maps in a geography textbook issued by the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) has acknowledged the error and said that corrective action has been taken.
In a letter addressed to Sanjoy, Union HRD Minister M.M.Pallam Raju said that the Secretary, Maharashtra State Board, Pune, has accepted that the textbook of Geography for class X prepared by the State Board for the year 2013-14, contains nine maps of India. While eight maps are correctly printed, one map that gave details of India and neighbouring countries inadvertently omitted the State of Arunachal Pradesh.
He further revealed that the Maharashtra State Board prepares textbooks in eight mediums (i.e. Marathi, Hindi, English, Gujarati, Kannada, Urdu,Telugu and Sindhi) for Class 9 to 12.
He said: "The above mentioned error has occurred in the textbooks of Marathi and English mediums. As soon as the error was reported, the Board immediately verified the details and has taken corrective action."
Raju further said that "Under the provisions of the Maharashtra State Board and Secondary Education Act, 1965 and regulations made under it, the Board of Studies for Social Sciences Part-ll (Geography and Economics) has the responsibility to prepare the syllabus and the textbooks for the subject. The Board of Studies has been given adequate freedom and authority to carry out its assigned responsibility effectively."
He said that the Board of Studies has accepted its mistake in writing and as such this Board of Studies has been dissolved with immediate effect, and added that further action is in progress.
He said that the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education has deeply regretted the error that occurred in the geography textbook.